Tips for coaching softball/team mom

[KrystalS]

My DH and I volunteered to coach DDs softball team this year. They are machine pitch/kid pitch. Anyone have tips to make it go smoothly? We've had a few practices so far and the girls are really improving. DH is pretty much handling the coaching and I'm keeping everything organized, taking care of scheduling, basically team mom duties. DH is worried about stepping on parents toes when it comes to the girls positions. We have a couple of very involved parents, which is great they have really helped out with practices, but DH is worried they will want input when it comes to where their girls play during games.

I found some great ideas on Pinterest for keeping the dugout going smoothly during games.
http://roommomextraordinaire.blogspot.com/2013/02/basketball-bags-baseball-tags.html

http://www.michellepaigeblog.com/2011/04/organize-that-dugout.html

[AngB]

At this age, I would rotate them at positions a lot b/c getting the experience is more important than winning. There will be years and years for them to play one position. Then the parents can't say much about it either.

The best practices, IMO, have enough adult volunteers that you can have several different stations, keep the girls in small groups going through each station. (IE. one station practicing fielding ground balls, one station practicing fielding pop flies, one station practicing hitting off a tee, etc.) instead of having everyone standing in the field watching one person bat and one person field. Lots of work on fundamentals and the basics at this age. Fielding, throwing, hitting off tee's. (When we complained that hitting off tee's is for babies, they always pointed out that even the pro's still use tee's for hitting practice, which is true.) Since they are hitting off pitching machines, maybe consider trying to take them to batting cages once or twice (you should be able to call and reserve a cage or 2 cages and then split the cost among the team or among the people who show up.)

ETA: They have clipboards the shape of a baseball/softball field, you can get magnets and label them with each kid's name and put them on that for batting order and field positions, or just get a dry erase one. That big long list thing looks like a PITA to deal with. As does the bins for gloves and stuff. It just seems to me that they are making it more complicated then it needs to be on that blog.

Good luck! I hope you have fun and the girls have fun! My dad coached for a long time and it was a very good thing for our family.

[KrystalS]

At this age, I would rotate them at positions a lot b/c getting the experience is more important than winning. There will be years and years for them to play one position. Then the parents can't say much about it either.

The best practices, IMO, have enough adult volunteers that you can have several different stations, keep the girls in small groups going through each station. (IE. one station practicing fielding ground balls, one station practicing fielding pop flies, one station practicing hitting off a tee, etc.) instead of having everyone standing in the field watching one person bat and one person field. Lots of work on fundamentals and the basics at this age. Fielding, throwing, hitting off tee's. (When we complained that hitting off tee's is for babies, they always pointed out that even the pro's still use tee's for hitting practice, which is true.) Since they are hitting off pitching machines, maybe consider trying to take them to batting cages once or twice (you should be able to call and reserve a cage or 2 cages and then split the cost among the team or among the people who show up.)

ETA: They have clipboards the shape of a baseball/softball field, you can get magnets and label them with each kid's name and put them on that for batting order and field positions, or just get a dry erase one. That big long list thing looks like a PITA to deal with. As does the bins for gloves and stuff. It just seems to me that they are making it more complicated then it needs to be on that blog.

Good luck! I hope you have fun and the girls have fun! My dad coached for a long time and it was a very good thing for our family.

Thanks! Great tips about the stations, I will tell DH this. We've tried to break them up into groups, it works well at practices where we have lots of parents helping but when it's just DH and I it doesn't work. I have DS with me so I can only help so much. We are definitely planning a trip to the batting cages, I really don't like machine pitch I wish they would just have coach pitch.

[jenmcadams]

The best practices, IMO, have enough adult volunteers that you can have several different stations, keep the girls in small groups going through each station. (IE. one station practicing fielding ground balls, one station practicing fielding pop flies, one station practicing hitting off a tee, etc.) instead of having everyone standing in the field watching one person bat and one person field. Lots of work on fundamentals and the basics at this age. Fielding, throwing, hitting off tee's. (When we complained that hitting off tee's is for babies, they always pointed out that even the pro's still use tee's for hitting practice, which is true.) Since they are hitting off pitching machines, maybe consider trying to take them to batting cages once or twice (you should be able to call and reserve a cage or 2 cages and then split the cost among the team or among the people who show up.)

ETA: They have clipboards the shape of a baseball/softball field, you can get magnets and label them with each kid's name and put them on that for batting order and field positions, or just get a dry erase one. That big long list thing looks like a PITA to deal with. As does the bins for gloves and stuff. It just seems to me that they are making it more complicated then it needs to be on that blog.



I totally agree with all of this...my DD played competitive softball (she doesn't play anymore and now just focuses on swimming and soccer) and when they were just starting they did batting cages every week (our local county league had a set of cages that we could reserve and didn't have to pay for), practices has 4-5 parents with stations and girls rotated positions. By the 3rd year, position rotation didn't happen as much - girls sort of settled in where they were effective.

Good luck!

[AngB]

Thanks! Great tips about the stations, I will tell DH this. We've tried to break them up into groups, it works well at practices where we have lots of parents helping but when it's just DH and I it doesn't work.

Yeah, that's hard with most teams I think. Make sure the parents know you want their help for practices. And even if you don't have parents, I would try to figure out ways to break them up even just a little bit if you can. (Like have 2-4 girls out of the way rolling ground balls to each other and practicing fielding them while you are doing something else with others then they switch.)

ETA: In the batting cages, we always found it the most effective for each person to get about 5ish-10 pitches then switch (so you want them lined up and ready to go in and out fairly quickly), then when they are out of balls, everyone helps pick up and keep going. I have seen some teams let one person go for a long time then they are done entirely-that's not usually as good b/c everyone gets bored waiting for their turn and the person batting gets tired which can lead to bad habits with their swing.